Two minutes with the director of ‘Pushpak’ and ‘Aboorva Sagotharargal’, and you see why his movies are filled with such irrepressible humour.

At 80, Singeetham Srinivasa Rao bears the mien of a puckish woodland sprite. Were it not for his years, it’s easy to imagine him slapping a “Kick Me” label on the back of an unsuspecting passerby, and were he not human, he might have been one of those enchanted beings in Shakespeare’s comedies, sprinkling fairy dust on lovesick men and women and delighting in the ensuing confusion. Rao has directed a number of Telugu films, and Tamil audiences know him, primarily, as the man who worked his magic on some of Kamal Haasan’s best-regarded films – Rajapaarvai, Aboorva Sagotharargal, Pushpak and Michael Madana Kamarajan. Rao wears his laurels very lightly. I ran into him at the Hindu’s Lit for Life festival the day before he was scheduled to appear in a panel discussion about screenwriting. I said I was a big fan. He smiled and said mischievously, “That’s because you haven’t seen my bad movies.”

The next day, during the discussion – anchored by K Hariharan, and also featuring Balu Mahendra and Anjum Rajabali – Rao spoke playfully and passionately about his many, many years in the film industry. He recalled being an assistant director on Maya Bazaar. He explained why songs work in our films. He said that he vibes well with Kamal Haasan because they both like to laugh at themselves. He confessed that he disliked Chandralekha when he first saw it, and realised that it was a classic only after 25 years, “a fact that the audiences realised in just two minutes.” He remembered, while shooting in Bangalore, running into “a man who looked very familiar.” It was David Lean, scouting for locations for A Passage to India. The two lit up a conversation when an inflamed Rao ran up and admitted to being a great admirer. Lean was having trouble with the screenplay. Rao said, “But you made such a great movie out of Great Expectations. Why is this adaptation any different?” Lean said, “That’s because Charles Dickens was a great screenwriter.” Every anecdote is accompanied by its own rimshot.

After the session, some of us repaired for lunch, and we saw the filmmaker preparing to seat himself at a nearby table, with his family. Waving in his direction like shameless groupies looking to catch their idol’s eye, we asked him to join us, and, after hesitating for a second, he did. (Later, we apologised for monopolising his company, keeping him away from his family. He said, without missing a beat, “That’s okay. I speak to them every day.” Rimshot!) He held court with more anecdotes, crowned with the story about the Sundari neeyum song sequence from Michael Madana Kamarajan. His original vision was to feature background dancers dressed like widows who resembled the kleptomaniac so devilishly played by SN Lakshmi – hence the original tune along the lines of the devotional chant Samba Sadashiva. But he walked into Ilayaraja’s studio the next day and found that the maestro had spiked the last syllable of each line with a frisson, a sharper hue, and he had to abandon fantasies of waltzing widows. A single note changed, and he had to imagine the song anew. This revelation was tinged not with the regret of wasted effort but with the humility and wonder that mere men experience when confronted with the mysterious processes of creation.

When someone asked him when he’d make another movie like Michael Madana Kamarajan, he said, rather philosophically, that a great many things have to come together for a film to work, and it’s difficult to repeat a success – films, sometimes, just happen. Even earlier, in the panel discussion, he acknowledged his smallness in the scheme of things. He said that sometimes you realise that the film is not working when you’re ten days into shooting, and sometimes only after shooting has wrapped. The solution? Don’t look back. Soldier on. As Rao guided us through the tracks and trails of the cinematic jungles he knows so well, we had begun to resemble boy scouts around a campfire – such remarkable stories, such a remarkable life. There was a sense of travesty that these nuggets were being excavated from the vault so that a bare handful of us could be dazzled, and it came as a relief when he said he was writing his autobiography. But even that revelation arrived with a side of mischief. He is structuring his story like a screenplay, the key directive being “CUT TO,” so that he can “skip over the boring bits.” Listening to him, none of us believed for a minute that his life contained any boring bits.

Lights, Camera, Conversation… is a weekly dose of cud-chewing over what Satyajit Ray called Our Films Their Films. An edited version of this piece can be found here.

Very nice article. Apoorva Sagodharargal and Michael Madhana Kama Rajan are two of my most favourite Kamal movies. The humour in these movies was so organic, in sharp contrast to the “comedy tracks” that had become the norm even in those days. Heck, even Mani ratnam had a comedy track in Mouna Raagam.

BTW, I heard Rao’s directing another movie soon and Madhan Karky(now don’t ask me who that is) is writing the dialogues. Is that true?

I wish the interview was longer (is there a longer version available?). MMKR is my most favorite Tamil movie of all time and thus, I am automatically committed to reading anything about SSR and watching anything he makes.

@baradwaj: How about a book on the making of MMKR ( along the lines of Jai Arjun’s book on Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron). Seems like SIngeetham would be a much better source of interesting anecdotes than Kundan Shah 😀 .Of course, it’s up to you to find someone interested in publishing it 😀

Loved this article. Here is a man filled with humility and who has the guts to laugh at himself. Most of all, he gave us the Kamal Hassan we miss today. Wonderful. I just wish he had taken more movies. What can I say? Greatness is defined by quality and not quantity as many think in the Tamil Movie Industry. Thanks for sharing this with us

It’s kinda cool that a guy who’s much older than his target audience made such mass entertainers like MMKR. From Maya Bazaar to MMKR, audience tastes changed so much, but I guess comedy is comedy. I still laugh uproariously at Maya Bazaar and also at MMKR.

Sorry. I missed Raja Paarvai. Only realized when I saw the Hindu Mag today. Whattay movie! The concept of scene continuity taken to a whole new level in that one. They don’t make such movies these days. 😦

MMKR’s one of my fav movies ever. I bought the dvd bout 6 months back an was laughin all the way through. It only makes you yearn for the Kamal of the late 80s-early90s vintage. If only he’d stop making comedy flicks that have jokes running in concentric circles, and try to keep it simple as he did in his earlier films.

@rameshram I didn’t read the editorial (though that was why I visited the site) but my eye caught your “Fox News Assholes: – something that looked more delicious, and lo it was! But there are a host of other beasts from that menagerie that you have left out. Candidates who are a lot more obvious, like Sean Hannity, or that unleashed thug O’Reilly. Any particular reasons?

Was forwarded this piece about Kamal and really enjoyed reading it. Funny, heartfelt, plus some really good analysis about Kamal in his MGR phase. Thought I’d share in case you haven’t seen it on Twitter or elsewhere.

PS: Are there others who get email forwards these days? Or is it all FB and Twitter? 🙂

“Finally, Shringar Nagaraj, who had been running an international tour company, came on board….Pushpak came to life not because of an actor, cameraman, or anyone. It’s because of this person.”
“One week after we began shooting for the movie, I felt something was wrong, though I couldn’t diagnose where….It was the multi-faceted Panju Arunachalam who came to the rescue….‘The dwarf should be the hero. He shouldn’t lose,” he said. He suggested that Kamal should do a double role. What Panju told us changed the fate of the movie.”